


Ligature

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Bloodletting [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Emotional Idiots In Love, M/M, Porn And Feelings But A Distinct Lack Of Plot, Post-Finale, They Fight and Fight and Fight and Fight and Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:36:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6342304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Will arches and twists so beautifully beneath Hannibal that he can’t resist the urge to brush his lips over the sharp edge of Will’s shoulder. He tastes sweat, heat, salt, Will. The flavor is entirely worth the sharp snap of pain when Will takes advantage of his distraction to drive an elbow up and back, into Hannibal’s ribs. </i><br/> <br/>Or: A follow-up to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6125189">Bloodletting</a>, in which a post-finale Will continues to try to work out some rather muddled feelings. Hannibal's pretty okay with being the test laboratory for that experiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ligature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [everybreathagift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybreathagift/gifts).



> Good lord. Okay, so this STARTED as a fill for a "things you said that made me feel like shit" prompt for [everybreathagift](http://archiveofourown.org/users/everybreathagift/pseuds/everybreathagift) and if you squint REALLY hard that's still in there, somewhere, for like twenty words of the four-thousand-plus words this turned into. Also it was supposed to be smut but it turned into like, 30% smut and 70% CANNIBAE FEELINGS. So...you know. This is basically a disaster. Welcome back to the smut-and-feelings trash fire, buttercups.

Will arches and twists so beautifully beneath Hannibal that he can’t resist the urge to brush his lips over the sharp edge of Will’s shoulder. He tastes sweat, heat, salt,  _ Will.  _ The flavor is entirely worth the sharp snap of pain when Will takes advantage of his distraction to drive an elbow up and back, into Hannibal’s ribs. 

Hannibal’s hold slackens enough for Will to tear loose and get up with a groan and a bright half-feral gleam in his eye at his own success. The sight of him tears at Hannibal with a pain much worse than the fading burn of the blow to his ribs. Will is equally lovely in defeat and in triumph; he should not be possible. 

Will seems to think there is “winning” and “losing” in these fights, and Hannibal doesn’t disabuse him of the notion, but he could not himself say what the difference might be. His pleasure lies in different directions. Pressing the limits of what his healing body can do, a little further each day, and earning the aches that come with the discoveries. Feeling Will’s skin, warmed by sun and exertion and damp with sweat, slide and press against his own. Watching Will’s confidence in his own capabilities increase with time. The sounds Will makes when grappling or hitting or pinned; not quite the sounds he makes spread under or over Hannibal in their bed, but a funhouse-mirror reflection, enough alike to be thoroughly delightful and distracting. The ways in which Will’s every move, each step and jab and feint, are a beautiful insight into his quicksilver mind. To know how Will fights is to know how Will thinks. It satisfies perhaps the deepest of all Hannibal’s hungers.

Hannibal could not possibly care less about the end result of their sparring with these bounties to be enjoyed along the way, except inasmuch as Will would know and complain if Hannibal were not putting forth real effort.

So he does, going in for another tackle. He’s not at all displeased when Will evades him, nor is he sorry for the near-yelp Will lets out when he’s brought up short immediately afterward  by Hannibal’s hand in his hair. His neck curves back at a pleasing angle; Hannibal commits it to memory.

Will tenses and turns as far as Hannibal will let him, to glare hotly back in his direction. “You’re going to snap my neck one day doing that,” he complains, but even as he says it he’s moving again, twisting back in toward Hannibal to aim where his torso is unprotected. It must tug even more painfully at his hair but it’s worth it to Will for the chance to drive the air from Hannibal’s lungs.

As if he’d ever needed force for that.

Hannibal loosens his grip on those dark curls in time to catch Will and reel him in close, too close to swing a fist. “I never would,” he promises, and means it. The delicate bones of Will’s spinal column are his prayer book and his rosary; he would no more snap them than he would set fire to the  _ Primavera, _ their  _ Primavera. _

He has no such compunctions about bruising, though, and he lets his fingers dig in hard against Will’s upper arm where he holds him firmly. Bruises fade, and are beautiful while they last. He treasures the ones he leaves; treasures more the ones he is given. Wishes only that it were possible to bruise more precisely, so that they would each carry the exact whorls and ridges of each other’s fingerprints. 

Will stalls under the tight hold Hannibal has on him, tension coiling even tighter for a moment and then bleeding out of him as his head drops forward onto Hannibal’s chest. “Like hell you wouldn’t,” he mutters, but it’s half-muffled against Hannibal’s skin and there’s a note of weariness in it. “All I’d have to do is try to leave. I’d get about three steps and you’d break me like a twig.”

Hannibal’s pierced twice over: by Will’s words, and the press of a hand Will slides up his ribs at the same time, fingernails trailing over his skin. He wouldn’t, he wants to protest, but the words die unspoken. He barely believes them himself, how could he expect Will to?  All he can do is hold Will to him tighter in a silent plea:  _ Let’s never find out. _

The small, silent motion must be enough like capitulation to satisfy Will’s need for a winner and a loser, because he sighs hot against Hannibal’s chest and then there’s another hand working its way up Hannibal’s other side. This one’s more gentle, cautious around Hannibal’s still-tender new scars.

Hannibal holds very, very still as Will’s hands, and then Will’s mouth, trail upward along his body. This is something new and any movement on his part might end it. Hannibal gleefully blurs the lines between what they do out here when they fight, and what they do upstairs in their bed, but Will never does. Will needs space after a fight, even just a few token minutes of cleaning fresh scrapes or drinking a glass of water, to gather himself before he invites Hannibal back to bed, or doesn’t. Will builds his forts. Will fiercely patrols the few boundaries he still has, and snaps when Hannibal threatens to transgress them.

Will does  _ not  _ kiss Hannibal in the bright sunlight, in their yard, short kisses with frequent pauses to catch his breath, because they’re both still panting from exertion. Will doesn’t slide his own hands deep into Hannibal’s hair to tug, lightly but pointedly, making a point about discomfort that fails to land because the response that tears through Hannibal is entirely pleasurable. 

Except that apparently he does those things, now, and Hannibal should probably wonder why but he can’t do anything except melt helplessly into Will’s hands and mouth. So he does, for several long moments of pure overwhelmed sensation, until Will pulls back with a little gasp that satisfies Hannibal’s need to know he’s not the only one feeling slightly wrecked already.

He finds his voice to ask Will, “Should we go indoors? We seem to be done out here.”

The look he gets in return isn’t far off from that bright wild look in Will’s eye when he gets a good swing in and knows he’s hurt Hannibal, at least briefly. Something between a smile and a snarl, and Will pressing in closer before he says, “Are we?” He’s flush against Hannibal now, and there’s no pretending they’re not both rapidly getting hard. “What if I wanted you out here? You’d let me, wouldn’t you? As long as I stay you’ll let me do anything.”

It’s not far off. If Will really wanted him out here he’d… Well. He’d have to look around and assure himself they really are far enough from the neighbors for privacy, and he’d do a quick calculation about the likelihood of the mailman arriving in the next few minutes and happening to catch a glimpse around the side of the house. But they both know he wouldn’t say no.

He’s fairly sure this is one of Will’s feints, though, mostly a test to see what Hannibal will do. He’s fairly sure Will’s preferred variant of sex outdoors is more “secluded campsite in the woods” outdoors, not “neatly tended lawn in semi-suburbia” outdoors. 

He counters: “Inside, Will. You’re not going to leave and I'm not going to hurt you.” 

He wishes he sounded a little more certain on either account. He wishes there weren’t a faint note of bitterness underlying Will’s voice when he answers, “Not today.”  He wishes he hadn’t earned that, and worse, long since.

There’s nothing to be done but to follow Will, though. Across the lawn, to their bedroom, probably over the edges of the known world if Will beckoned him. Probably straight to Jack Crawford’s office to turn himself back in, if Will asked. But Will won’t ask; not today.

Today Will only wants Hannibal to go as far as their bed, to strip and lie supine there, shivering a little as the air conditioning cools the sweat on his skin. But Will takes only a moment before shucking his own remaining clothes and stretching out, beside Hannibal and then on top of him .

Will is warm over him, his own usual heat plus skin warmed by sun and movement, but it fails to solve the shivering problem. He runs lips and tongue and a hint of teeth over Hannibal’s jaw and throat and collarbone thoughtfully, as if he just might bite down and rip into the tender flesh there. Hannibal can do nothing but tip his head back and offer himself up as a willing sacrifice to whatever his capricious, demanding, impossible god wants of him, whether that’s his love or body or his blood.

He winds one of his hands up Will’s back, trailing over each vertebra and fanning out over Will’s ribcage and shoulder blades, gratified by the way Will arches into his touch, gracile and cat-like. He tries to reach between them with the other, intending to briefly explore the fine architecture of Will’s hipbone en route to his cock, but finds himself stopped by a hand circling his wrist.

Will removes his tongue from Hannibal’s clavicle long enough to make a vague scolding sound. In fact, Hannibal’s almost certain he’s heard Will use exactly that noise to warn his dogs away from bad behavior. Embarrassment isn’t really in Hannibal’s emotional range, but if it were, he suspects it would be something like a larger and more overwhelming version of the urge he feels to turn his face away at that particular sound. As it is, he resists the urge and just moves his hand to Will’s waist to see if he’s allowed to touch there.

Apparently he is; a light touch gains him an approving little sound. He grips harder to pull their bodies closer and Will responds with an enthusiastic roll of his hips that presses him against Hannibal just  _ there,  _ hard and hot and just a bit slippery. Hannibal lets the resultant sound, half-sigh and half-moan, slip from his throat without any attempt to restrain it: another offering spun from his own substance. He’d sustain Will entirely on his own breath and body if he could; he’d live on Will’s. 

_ "Will," _ he finds himself saying. “Let me.”  Even he doesn’t know what he’s asking for - it doesn’t matter, probably. Will after a fight gives or takes as much or as little as he wants.

Will sits up in response, shifting backward a bit until he’s straddling Hannibal’s thigh. Out of range to torment Hannibal with his mouth now, he shifts to his hands, running them almost absently over Hannibal’s chest. He skims lightly enough over Hannibal’s nipples to tease but not hard enough to provide any real friction; he gets a firm enough grip on Hannibal’s greying chest hair to tug. Hannibal arches just slightly off the bed with the motion, pulled more by Will’s eyes on him than the actual light tug of his fingers.

One of Will’s eyebrows flickers upward and he does it again, as if Hannibal were a vaguely interesting science experiment in his hands and not a half-desperate naked man in his bed. A twist and a tug, and Hannibal goes where Will pulls him, sitting upright now with his hands at the small of Will’s back.

He hasn’t kissed Will properly since they made their way indoors and now he’s finally in striking distance of the mouth that’s been alternately tormenting him and smirking at him since he lay down, he’s not going to miss the chance. He moves Will the necessary inch or so closer and kisses the corner of his mouth gently before pulling him into a proper kiss, or perhaps a series of them. It’s hard to say where one ends and the next begins, whose mouth opens first to allow the pressure and slick wet twist of tongues, whose sighs echo between them and are swallowed down. Hannibal does know that when a small sharp taste of blood springs up it’s from his own lip, bitten by Will - Hannibal isn’t biting to draw blood, not today, when he’s so intent on proving that he won’t do any unwanted harm.

He loses himself for some indeterminate period of time in just this: The flavors of Will’s mouth, the bend and sway of his body when he forgets to be self-conscious, the grass-and-sweat-and-musk smell of him. He almost forgets he has a body of his own, for all that it’s sending him pretty regular messages about what it wants, and needs, and would throw Will down and take if he had an iota less self-control.

Eventually it’s a slash of pain that draws him shuddering back into his own body, when Will rakes his fingernails down Hannibal’s spine, hard. There’ll be welts, probably. Will does it again with a cruel precision, deeper in almost precisely the same path, and Hannibal amends the thought - probably blood. His own blood and skin under Will’s fingernails.  He’s only vaguely aware that it’s been going on for a while, his back thoroughly striped pink and red with Will’s design already.

He imagines his eyes must be wide and blown as Will’s own are when they meet his gaze as Will backs off, out of Hannibal’s grasp and off his lap, and shoves firmly at his shoulder. “You’re going to feel that,” he says, and his voice is neither unkind nor displeased at the thought as he presses Hannibal back down again.

Hannibal goes willingly. He lets Will see the wince as the new scratches catch against the bedsheets. They both know Hannibal can take much more pain with much less reaction and chooses to let his response be visible: offerings upon offerings. Perhaps it’s that knowledge that makes Will’s face soft and open for a moment when he leans in for another kiss, a barely-there brush of his lips, and breathes, “ _ Good,  _ Hannibal,” over Hannibal’s skin.  There’s an echo in his voice of Hannibal’s own approving intonation when they spar and Will gets in a hit. He rests a hand on Hannibal’s cheek; brushes a stray fall of hair from Hannibal’s eyes. Hannibal couldn’t stop himself from leaning into the touch if he wanted to, and Will holds him there, resting in his palm, for a long soft moment before he moves again.

Even as he bleeds onto the sheets beneath him and watches Will reach for the jar in the nightstand, Hannibal’s acutely aware that this is more tenderness than Will typically shows him in these moments when their fights spill over into their bed. It feels unsteady: shifting ground, quicksand, another eroding bluff with a even more dangerous fall below. He nearly chokes on the desire to press an  _ I love you _ into every inch of Will’s skin, but he doesn’t imagine the ground has shifted so far or so fast that he’s allowed to do that now. Not until this is over; not until every ounce of fight in Will has gone.

He swallows the words down fiercely and draws his legs up and open in invitation, pulling Will back to him. Will draws artificial lines between words and actions and has his own peculiar rules for when either are allowed, but Hannibal knows those forts won’t last forever. He can wait; this particular version of waiting is much better than the three empty years that preceded it. For now he contents himself with pouring his love into the wordless expressions he’s allowed. He kisses Will deep and languid, and almost succeeds in thoroughly distracting them both. 

Almost, not quite; a slick finger presses, Hannibal hums a wordless approval, and he finds Will’s tongue pressing into his mouth at almost the same time as his finger sinks into the heat of Hannibal’s body. The simultaneous penetrations are as arousing as the tiny hitches in the rhythms are endearing; Will forgetting himself momentarily in one pleasure or another. Above and beyond physical sensation there is simply  _ Will, _ in and over and around him, a sea in which Hannibal would quite willingly drown and never even try to surface for air. 

“More,  _ please," _ he asks and he both means and doesn't mean anything so prosaic as “more fingers, your cock, I’ll take anything you want to give me, just fuck me until I forget everything outside this room” although he does mean that, and would, and will. He thinks, as much as he can think anything with Will now two fingers deep into him and murmuring vague nonsensical endearments against his shoulder, that he means something like  _ never stop touching me. _

And if it comes out as  _ I need you to fuck me so hard I can’t walk afterwards without remembering it, _ well, that’s not far off either. And Will knows what he means by it. He doesn’t wait for Hannibal to ask for  _ more _ again. He gives Hannibal just too much, just too soon, so there’s burn and stretch but not real pain. Not any kind of pain Hannibal wouldn’t welcome at Will’s hands. 

Hannibal’s world narrows to kaleidoscope impressions of fractured, fractal sensation as Will takes him apart, seemingly without effort: Will’s mouth slipping loose from his own with a sigh, trailing a line of wet heat over his cheek and jaw and just behind his ear where there’s a spot that Will knows too well how to find. Hannibal’s own voice, shorn of its ornate vocabulary and left to expression need in monosyllables -  _ oh _ and  _ please _ and  _ there _ and  _ Will. _ His hips that twist and buck and seek for a rhythm Will denies him, changing his the pressure and tempo of his fingers every time Hannibal finds one to match. Will’s intent eyes, his knife of a smile, that twist and press even further inside Hannibal than his clever hands.

It’s enough, more than enough. He could come right now. Will in this particular mood would barely pause. Would go ahead and fuck him, barely taking notice of his oversensitized shaking, but he’d apologize so sweetly afterwards for the lack of care. The memory of similar liaisons that ended that way is enough to send another sharp lash of pleasure shivering down Hannibal’s spine.

Instead he remembers that he has hands and words, and uses them to reach for Will’s face, cup his cheek, and say breathlessly, “Enough. Unless you’re determined to torture me today.”

Will wavers before his eyes, blurs from sharp-eyed tormentor to affectionate lover, pressing an almost-chaste kiss to Hannibal’s temple. Will is so many things, and they’re all Hannibal’s now, and he couldn’t honestly say whether it’s that or the teasing tone of Will’s voice when he says, “ _ Reckoning, _ doctor,” that draws him tight with tension and need.

But reckoning is an idle threat today; Will’s had enough of torment, or has tired of this particular variant of it. He draws away from Hannibal’s hand and achingly slowly draws his fingers out from Hannibal’s body to kneel between his legs and look down at him, considering. Hannibal can almost see the calculations behind Will’s eyes, a vivid flash of imagery - rolled over, or like this?  He  _ sees  _ himself struggling to stay upright on shaky hands and knees, Will stretched out over his back with his skin and sweat stinging Hannibal’s latest scratches, whispering sweet and filthy things into the nape of his neck. Sees it and wants it, but no more or less than he wants a dozen other configurations - he just wants Will, any way he can have him.

In the end, fondness softens Will’s flushed features again. He circles a thumb absently on Hannibal’s thigh and asks, “Where do you want to be?  Like this?”

_ I want to crawl inside your veins and live and die there in the hot wet darkness of you _ isn’t exactly a workable answer, so Hannibal exiles the stray thought and nods, reaching out with the leg Will isn’t holding, to snare Will and pull him closer in. “Just like this, where I can see you.”  

Will flushes pinker still at that but nods and says, “Okay.”  Just that. 

So many things are so complicated between them, full of negotiations and hidden traps and barely-healed wounds. But this much is simple: Will stretching long and lithe over him for another kiss before he sits up again, slicks himself, and presses into Hannibal without any further preamble. Slow and steady, inexorable, and so  _ good _ that it draws Hannibal to breathlessness to be so filled and desired and taken.

Will’s eyes are closed and his lips move as if to cry out but there’s no sound. Only Will’s harsh breathing, only Hannibal’s  _ yes, like that, _ only the hot slide of their bodies until there’s no way to be any closer. Will finally opens his eyes then, when he’s as deep as he can possibly go inside Hannibal, and they’re bright and wide and they  _ see _ Hannibal through and through, pinning him to the bed far more thoroughly than he’s already pinned by Will’s hands and Will’s cock. Dissecting him far more naked than a simple lack of clothes.

Hannibal doesn’t move and barely breathes - he’s waiting for the moment that always comes if he’s patient, after they fight each other into submission. Sometimes it’s almost immediate and sometimes it’s like this, not arriving until one of them is achingly deep inside the other. But sooner or later there’s always this: A moment when some tight, painful thing in Will seems to snap free suddenly, and all his limbs loosen at once. When his touches turn from painful to reverent as he stops battling whatever it is in himself that his fights with Hannibal don’t entirely vanquish. When he bends down to Hannibal, or arches up toward him, and finally says, “ _ Oh. _ Oh, god, I love you.”  It sounds like a new revelation every time to both of them, as if maybe this time Will wasn’t going to say it.

But he does, always, and apparently this time too: “ _ Fuck, _ Hannibal, I love you.”  Says it and begins to move before Hannibal has a chance to answer.  Slow only until he’s sure Hannibal’s tensing and moaning is pleasure and not pain, and then fast. Hard and deep and perfect, more than Hannibal ever let himself dream Will might be in all those years he dreamed alone.

Hannibal’s predictably half-gone from the instant Will says  _ I love you, _ and from there he’s just clinging to the edge, trying not to come from the simple knowledge that Will loves him, sees him and wants him and takes what he wants and gives Hannibal  _ this. _ His thighs burn and ache where he was holding them apart so he wraps them around Will’s hips instead, angling himself up, pressing Will down, as if they might somehow manage to eke out one more inch of closeness.

He rocks his hips up and finds a rhythm to match Will’s and this time Will doesn’t shift to a new staccato rhythm to frustrate Hannibal. This time it’s not a game of Torment the Cannibal, it’s a shared enjoyment. Hannibal bends just  _ so,  _ Will drives into him just  _ there  _ with an arm under Hannibal’s leg pressing him open and wide. Will murmurs  _ let go, I’ve got you  _ and Hannibal aches and trembles and refuses to give in just yet.

There is no universe in which Hannibal says a categorical  _ no _ to anything Will wants from him but there is, occasionally, a moment in which he says  _ not yet _ or  _ wait for it _ or  _ say please. _ There’s rippling, searing pleasure in giving Will everything he wants but also in the subtle narrowing of Will’s eyes when he realizes he’s going to have to work a little harder to shred the last of Hannibal’s self-control. There’s the tremolo of Will’s body where he pins Hannibal down. There’s the hot panting of his breath and his hair damp with sweat and all of it worth Hannibal holding white-knuckled to the edge of his own almost-pained pleasure for a few more moments, to see Will like this, near-frantic to drive Hannibal over the edge.

Hannibal holds to the high wire of his need, consumed and shaken and all his senses full of Will, as long as he can.  Only then does he finally curl shaking fingers around himself to stroke once, twice, and find his release - flying, falling, blind with the relief of it.

He misses the instant of Will’s own climax, coming back to himself to find Will collapsed heavy over him, face buried in Hannibal’s neck, with shaky limbs and a heartbeat thrumming hard and fast against Hannibal’s own. The sorrow at missing the moment is easily eclipsed by the ease and joy of knowing there’ll be another chance, and another. 

Suffused with unbearable tenderness, he pulls himself together again enough to stroke Will’s damp hair and the back of his neck, to nestle Will closer and more comfortable against him. Will goes where Hannibal arranges him, wrung-out and free of tension at last, seemingly entirely uninterested in moving or speaking ever again. Hannibal knows the unspoken rules; he’s allowed to say what he will, now. Not that it’s news to Will, or anything he hasn’t said dozens of times already. He looks forward to the numbers climbing into the hundreds, the thousands, into infinity, one declaration at a time. 

“I love you terribly,” he murmurs against the top of Will’s head, the only thing he can reach just now to kiss. He thinks it’s in English, but he might be wrong. It hardly matters. The tightening squeeze of Will’s fingers laced through his own tell him he’s been heard and understood.

They should get up and shower, but Hannibal’s certainly not going to be the one to dislodge Will. He lies content and drifting, until Will’s voice stirs him: “‘m sorry I said that. I wouldn’t leave.”  It’s muffled against Hannibal’s neck, and slurred with exhaustion and contentment, and it takes Hannibal a long minute to remember what they’d even been talking about before they’d fallen into bed. Something about Hannibal hurting Will; something about Will leaving. It doesn’t matter now. He won’t; Will wouldn’t. Impossible to imagine at this particular moment 

He makes sure to reach for English this time when he says, “I know, Will. Shh. Rest.”

He does. They do, together.


End file.
